Le Calvaire

By Octave Mirbeau

Book Overview

Le Calvaire is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, which recounts the tortured and traumatic coming of age of the narrator Jean Mintie. It paints a nightmarish picture of late nineteenth century French society: from the stultifying boredom of bourgeois provincialism, to the horrors of the Franco-Prussian war, the grotesque avarice of shameless women and the moral bankruptcy of their compliant victims. Mintie's progress through life is a descent into Hell, a plumbing of the lower depths, the martyrdom of a godless man in a godless age.
The publication of Le Calvaire in 1886 marked a brilliant beginning for the Angry Young Man of the Age, who went on to flay the Establishment in Torture Garden and The Diary of a Chambermaid.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0946626995
• ISBN13: 9780946626991
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Dedalus
• Length: 223 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.8"